Sleep Recovery Mode

Good morning, friends! I’m writing to you at a reasonable time today because I’m going to lunch with my mom-in-law and her aunts, as we do, and my husband is awful enough to listen to me when I’m rational and not when I’m sleepy and want to stay in our nice warm bed. But really, getting up is the worst. I switched my older rougher blanket out for one of my super soft newer ones recently and it was a mistake. I super did not want to leave the warm fuzzies this morning, but here I am. Technically, I still have warm fuzzies as I snuggle under my favorite blanket, but it’s just not the same as bed.

This past week as has been a week of attempting to recover from driving eight hours in a day and getting back at 1:30 am to sleep like six hours and then return to my normally scheduled life. While the trip out was a success, we didn’t get lots and we had a good time, it was exhausting to drive back that night and sleeping in not my own bed wasn’t super conducive to getting a lot of rest after that. So since Saturday I’ve been trying to catch up on all sleep and it doesn’t actually work that way.

My husband looked this up at one point. You have to get like twice as much sleep to recover from the sleep debt you wrack up from not getting a full eight hours a night, or something lie that. But then again, you’re also not actually supposed to get eight hours, since a REM cycle takes roughly three hours it’s better to get six or nine hours so you’re waking up at the end of a full REM cycle. It’s supposed to help you feel more awake and less groggy because you’re waking up from a shallower sleep. So technically I was better off getting up at 8:30 than sleeping in another two hours, but it was definitely not enough to recover from all that exhaustion. Apparently it’s basically impossible to actually catch up on sleep debt.

So I tried to sleep in this past week, but I also realize I do that a lot and it’s probably not super responsible. I used to be really good about getting up with my husband and doing my blogging and stuff, but not so much recently. Then again, we’ve also been consistently going to bed around 11:30 pm instead of 10:30 like we’re supposed to, so that doesn’t help. So sleeping in really wasn’t sleeping in so much as just sleeping to a reasonable time for when we went to bed to get a full nights sleep. And really, when you go to get up, but there’s a cat very comfy on top of you, what choice do you have but to stay in bed?

I realize that this is actually not a good excuse, but it is the way of cats. Unless they’re laying on your diaphragm. Then they have to move so you can actually breath. Breathing is more important than cats. Calamity just really likes laying on top of us in strange positions. Right now she’s sleeping half on my chest, half on my arm, which I’m using to type. It’s not super comfy for me, but she seems to be into it. I know I can get kitten cuddles if I leave the bed, but there’s just something special about sleeping with a cat on you. The girls were super sweet when I was sick and snuggled in all around me while I slept on the couch in the guest room.

So I’m battling the sleepies today, which probably means I should have made some coffee before I sat down and was claimed by a cat. I did think about it, but the allure of the comfy chair with the fuzzy blanket was too much. I should just keep a coffee pot by my chair so I can make myself coffee while I sit here. That would also require keeping a stirring utensil and non-dairy creamer on hand, which we have, actually… but it’s a year old now, so maybe we don’t want to use that. Should probably toss that at some point. Then again, it’s non-dairy, so who knows how long it’ll last?

I’m thinking the shower will help wake me up, as soon as I can bring myself to disturb the Calamity cat. Showers usually help with that. They say you shouldn’t take a warm shower in the morning, did you know that? The warm water is too soothing to wake you up, so they recommend taking a cold shower to wake up more. I know people who can stand that; I am not one of them. I can’t handle cold showers, I just can’t. They are the worst and I don’t understand why anyone would want to take one. They don’t leave you feeling clean and refreshed, they just leave you cranky. But maybe that’s just me. At any rate, the cold air when you get out of the shower does the same trick, I think, as the cold shower itself, so why not enjoy the warm while you can?

I keep thinking maybe we’ll try to get better about going to bed on time. It has yet to happen. We’re very easily distracted people and if Logan gets on his 3DS before bed I start playing around on my iPad and then he’s waiting for me to be done to put his 3DS away and I’m waiting for him to put his 3DS away to be done with my iPad and it’s just a mess until one of us just does it. It’s the same way with phones, and before you know it, it’s almost midnight and we still have all the lights on. Maybe we’ll get better about that someday. Maybe. I keep hoping. For now, coffee will have to do. It’s basically the same thing as sleep, right? Have a lovely day, my friends.